A bilingual edition of a renowned work of Puerto Rican literature,
" Cortijo's Wake/El entierro de Cortijo" is novelist Edgardo
Rodriguez Julia's vivid description of the funeral of legendary
Puerto Rican musician Rafael Cortijo." El entierro de Cortijo"
became an immediate bestseller following its original publication
in Puerto Rico in 1983. An unparalleled Afro-Puerto Rican
percussionist and bandleader, Cortijo (1928-1982) revolutionized
the country's musical culture. His band, Cortijo y Su Combo,
captivated Caribbean and Latin American audiences as it emerged in
the mid-1950s. Immensely popular across Puerto Rican social
classes, the band both "modernized" the traditional vernacular
forms of "bomba" and "plena" and forcefully reestablished their
African and working-class roots. The group's innovations have been
integral to salsa since the 1960s.
Winding through the streets of working-class San Juan with
Cortijo's funeral procession, Rodriguez Julia's autobiographical
chronicle provides a rare portrait of the impoverished society from
which Cortijo's music emerged. Along with detailed renderings of
grief-stricken mourners--including Cortijo's childhood friend and
fellow musician, the celebrated singer Ismael ("Maelo")
Rivera--Rodriguez Julia records his feelings as he, a
light-skinned, middle-class writer, confronts the world of poor
black Puerto Ricans. The author's masterful shifting of linguistic
registers, his acute sensitivity to Puerto Rican social codes, his
broad knowledge of popular music, and his sardonic ruminations on
death and immortality make this one of the most widely read books
of modern Puerto Rican literature. Well-known critic and cultural
historian Juan Flores has provided a scrupulous translation of
Rodriguez Julia's text and an introduction situating the book in
relation to Puerto Rican music and culture and the careers of
Cortijo and Rodriguez Julia.
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